By Chuck DeVore
According to California Governor (and former San Francisco Mayor) Gavin Newsom, the “vast majority” of San Francisco’s homeless people “also come in from… Texas.”
To him, that’s “just an interesting fact;” to PolitiFact, it’s “Pants on Fire” inaccurate. PolitiFact goes as far as calling it “ridiculous.”
The tiniest factual nugget for Newsom’s fib was contained in data from a city program that hands out bus tickets to the homeless so they can travel to family or friends who have agreed to care for them. Of 12,268 tickets issued over 14 years through last year, 827 were to Texas—that’s 6.7% of the total—though the highest for any destination not in California.
It makes sense that Texas would be the most popular state other than California—as the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual interstate migration report shows that Texas has been the No. 1 state for people moving out of California for more than a decade.
That Newsom, San Francisco’s mayor from 2004 to 2011, would want to blame a state 1,200 miles away for the growing ranks of homeless in the state’s fourth-largest city—and every other urban area in California—is both understandable and troubling.
Read the rest of the story on Forbes
Chuck DeVore: Texas Public Policy Foundation VP and former California legislator
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